Hi 👋🏼!
At Optima Forma we focus on helping talents to build their own skills to fast forward careers. So I am excited to kick off the "Being Found 🎯 Before Being Searched 🕵🏼 For" training later today! The training is to super charge your Social Networking to be 1000% more visible and get referrals.
The whole topic of the training is something that I hold dear as I believe that business networking is the most meaningful way to get to know new people.
Before and now
BEFORE 🐢 | NOW 🏃🏽 |
Taking hours / days to research and come up with a new blog. | AI helps you to research your topic so fast and you can have a simple blog in minutes, an authentic blog within 1-2 hours. |
Social Media wasn't everywhere, not some people didn't even use it. | Almost everyone knows Social Media now! |
Creating images and videos usually require help of professionals, to make your content more captivating. | AI is here to help you generate images, produce movies yourself. |
Social media had algorithms that tried to get you to check out feeds. | Social media now has AI that is more powerful and expert at getting users back to check their feeds. |
How social networking became a passion for me
To build some credibility on my side and to share some more background about my professional life, I would like to share with you relevant parts of my previous experiences so that you understand how I came to this training. It's quite a read with some video links if you are interested ... so take at least 10-15 minutes if you want to finish this blog and check out some of the video shared.
🥶 Cold calls anyone?
Aren't you tired of approaching someone in the "cold way"? I definitely do and knew that I had to learn different ways than making cold calls, when I was doing sales to the corporate world before 2010. Back then Facebook, Linkedin were all rising platforms weren't so advanced yet with all their ads / marketing tools. And Covid didn't happen yet, so in business anyone would understand that "networking" was a solid way to get business.
Learning about business networking
So I I decided to learn "business networking" by paying thousands in membership fees for various offline networking clubs and spending close to 1000 hours during 3 years, I finally understood that:
many network clubs are just about monthly meetups around some social activities
and the chance to build a relationship is just a bit more than visiting exhibitions or trade shows
only a few really trained you what is needed to get to the good stuff of networking
to get referrals and be introduced in a warm way 🤗 🤝
but you had to put in the time!
Social media before 2010
In those days as Web 2.0 and social media was new I was a speaker and trainer for marketers about the opportunities with the new technologies that finally allowed people to participate on the web massively. My customers then were mostly international publishers and wanted to understand the potential with social media.
Before 2010 in the corporate business world there weren't many early adopters, so I did the opposite. I read about the trends of fast spread of social media and I created accounts on all the fast growing social media platforms. I connected the dots and I started to link it to social commerce, something I knew my customers would be eager to better understand.
Vision for social commerce
Of course it's hard to convince people of a new vision with a powerpoint. So with the help of a friend I was inspired to create a demo of a fake Facebook app about social commerce. I created it in 2009, it's still on YouTube. I'm not lying when I tell you that people would approach me after the demo asking where they could find the real app on Facebook. Here's a video that shows me presenting it at a big MarCom exhibition.
Social marketing training
After speaking, collaborating and engaging with dozens of marketers and spending probably close to 1000 hours networking in real life, I connected the dots between online & offline business networking. It was in 2012 that I developed a training with a similar title for Dutch marketers to infuse real life networking concepts into their social marketing. In those days trainings were still given at nice offline venues.
The renewed Being Found Before Being Searched For training
So all the knowledge, understanding and experience of that past forms the base knowledge and understanding that you will also receive in this new training. But it's the hundreds of hours of joint collaboration with my colleagues Robin and Nirav that we're able to infuse our "greenish" understanding of how AI can help with this networking effort. This training is for individuals, but during if you wish I can help you to apply it also for your work.
Why is BNI a main inspiration source for social networking?
Interested about the training? Check out our Intro!
Happy networking everyone!
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